The sneks tell me there are no monopolies without government intervetion and, if things get close to it, the ones that do come about do not get to apply ludicrous prices and all the other evils expected of a monopoly.
So i would like for you leftists to tell me, if you know, of cases of monopoly not guaranteed by the government, save me from becoming a snek.
The sneks tell me there are no monopolies without government intervetion and, if things get close to it...
Ayden Martin
Other urls found in this thread:
youtube.com
marxists.org
exame.abril.com.br
youtube.com
espressostalinist.com
twitter.com
Chase Taylor
The companies form alliances with each other and form pseudostates.
Thomas Garcia
It is not government interference which creates a monopoly, it is the monopoly which interferes in government. See; corporate lobbyism. The businesses pay off politicians and congressional bureaucrats in order to maintain control over markets.
The only solution to this form of corruption is to rethink the republic, which elects leaders to "speak for the people". The end result of republics is that the interests of those in charge become separate from the interests of the citizens.
Also
Andrew Miller
Sneks:
monopolies caused by the state are bad
Also sneks:
monopolies that come about anyway aren't actually evil
Owen James
When Walmart was beginning their unstoppable rise to become the largest corporation in the world, their business strategy across the US was to open up a hypermarket and intentionally run it at a loss due to rock bottom prices to intentionally drive all the competitors in the area out of business, after a year or two when there was no more competition in the local area, they would then increase prices back to what they originally were at the other stores or higher, and nobody could compete with them or stop them, because they had essentially infinite resources to pour into a loss making branch whereas if local businesses couldn't make a profit they would go out of business. Of course, if anyone tried to compete with them after the fact, the Walmart could simply drop prices again and drive them out of business too, but the threat was sufficient that nobody would even try. A truly pernicious and sinister monopoly that has nothing whatsoever to do with government.
Nicholas White
That's a far fetched extrapolation not touching on the initial question, although some say that such a thing would is a desirable feature in comparison with the actual state.
Yes, as far as i can tell, that is how things go, it's how it went with oil, meat, railroads, banking and many more.
Not an example of monopoly without government help though, just and explanation of how it comes to happen.
The devil is in the details.
I have seen this claimed but not proven. I would argue that it sound like a poor way to do business when they could invest the money lost in such a gimmick elsewhere and that even though they kill smaller businesses their prices still are lower.
Also, they are a well established monster that interferes with legislation and regulations.
They support higher minimum wage because they know it kills small businesses that don't have huge turnover and teams of lawyers and accountants that can easily juggle employees and their work hours to dodge part of such a law's consequences.
Also, they are not a monopoly.
Sebastian Hernandez
Monopoly mostly doesn't exist as people imagine it. Look at US "monopoly capital" now being threatened by Chinese capital. A huge company that buys up lots of competition still has to compete with other big companies, and it even competes with itself (closing down subsidiaries, moving capital internally from one sector to another, etc).
Of course companies engage naturally in cartel behavior, but one thing everyone knows about cartels is that they compete with one another, and they also do not last forever.
Anwar Shaikh looks at the empirical evidence and the theory of "anti-competitive firms" in this video (and preceding ones):
youtube.com
He criticizes the Leninist conception of monopoly capital on an empirical basis of prices and profit rates. By and large, the big corporations do not get unusually high prices or profits! The reason why Keynesians and mainstream economists both say that there are "anti-competitive firms" is that the mainstream theory of "perfect competition" holds that all firms are the same size!!!
Anyway, read Capital, watch Shaikh's lecture videos, and if you're STEM, read his book. Hell, read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations! Anything is better than brainlet Snek economics.
James Wright
In order to view this as any more sinister than capitalism in general, you would have to have an irrational, liberal attachment to "small businesses."
Samuel Perez
Chapter 1 of Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism:
__________
The enormous growth of industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises are one of the most characteristic features of capitalism. Modern production censuses give most complete and most exact data on this process.
In Germany, for example, out of every 1,000 industrial enterprises, large enterprises, i.e., those employing more than 50 workers, numbered three in 1882, six in 1895 and nine in 1907; and out of every 100 workers employed, this group of enterprises employed. 22, 30 and 37, respectively. Concentration of production, however, is much more intense than the concentration of workers, since labour in the large enterprises is much more productive. This is shown by the figures on steam-engines and electric motors. If we take what in Germany is called industry in the broad sense of the term, that is, including commerce, transport, etc., we get the following picture. Large-scale enterprises, 30,588 out of a total of 3,265,623, that is to say, 0.9 per cent. These enterprises employ 5,700,000 workers out of a total of 14,400,000, i.e., 39.4 per cent; they use 6,600,000 steam horse power out of a total of 8,800,000, i.e., 75.3 per cent, and 1,200,000 kilowatts of electricity out of a total of 1,500,000, i.e., 77.2 per cent.
Less than one-hundredth of the total number of enterprises utilise more than three-fourths of the total amount of steam and electric power! Two million nine hundred and seventy thousand small enterprises (employing up to five workers), constituting 91 per cent of the total, utilise only 7 per cent of the total amount of steam and electric power! Tens of thousands of huge enterprises are everything; millions of small ones are nothing.
In 1907, there were in Germany 586 establishments employing one thousand and more workers, nearly one-tenth (1,380,000) of the total number of workers employed in industry, and they consumed almost one-third (32 per cent) of the total amount of steam and electric power.[1] As we shall see, money capital and the banks make this superiority of a handful of the largest enterprises still more overwhelming, in the most literal sense of the word, i.e., millions of small, medium and even some big “proprietors” are in fact in complete subjection to some hundreds of millionaire financiers.
Chapter 7:
_____________
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.
The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
Dylan Kelly
Saying big business is always the result of government intervention is like saying all animals bigger than bacteria are the result of government intervention.
You think you know more about making profit than those who steer Walmart?
Bentley James
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
Justin Walker
why wouldn't rich people band together to form a government in the absence of one?
Gavin Campbell
What's your point? I'll watch your video, i'll watch all of them, eventually, but right now, here, what's your point?
Sure, ok.
And what is your point?
Yeah, banking systems, the monetary system and corporations, all tight with the government.
Yes, that one line in my whole post is all there was to it. And your post is not completely unrelated to OP.
You want the thread to be about how governance would come about in anarchism?
I don't know. It depends on coercion, if the rich offered governance services and people took it or dropped it at will then it wouldn't be the same as the state. If they formed armies and took control over lands and peoples, solidifying power and becoming coercive powers, well, that's how states start.
How can that be stopped? I don't know, but people didn't know how slavery could be ended because someone had to pick that there cotton, yet it ended.
Andrew Kelly
Adrian Thompson
Mainstream economics treat political interference as exogenous to the otherwise perfect function of the markets. They don't realize that whether the market functions perfectly without political interference or not is irrelevant and practically unknowable, as politics and economics are inseparable in practice. The sneks aren't necessarily internally inconsistent, but their economic models and the assumptions they are built on is based on a fairy-tale that never was and never will be. That's the dead-end of libertarian "theory".
Henry Miller
Any system involving private property requires a state to uphold it. As such there will be state intervention in the economy as a result of the state existing. As such, monopolies will always form. Libertarianism works contrary to all concepts of political economy.
Evan Gray
Point being that this was happening without any type of state intervention, other than the protection of private property. It is the natural progression of capitalism, not something forced on us by the state.
Anthony Ward
They're also spooked to death by a strange combination of naive liberal moralism and 'righteous' egotism. They truly belong in the dustbin of history
Nathan Reed
My point is that Snek economics is literally made up. Again, if you won't read Marx, at least read Adam Smith and David Ricardo. They are the OG capitalist economists and they were right about almost everything in their theory.
Nolan Gomez
It's a moot point since capitalism has only developed in nation-states. At best there's fewer regulations, in which case competition still leads to consolidation because of mergers and acquisitions. No amount of free market magic can trump the efficiency of economy of scale and tendency towards it. The state provides a base of a capitalist economy through the guarantee of private property and the issuing of currency (and forces people to use it through taxation). Above that the capitalist state takes on an increasing amount of tasks to protect the capitalist class, prevent and manage social unrest, engage in imperialism, consolidate research & development and other things.
Libertarians don't even know basic economics or history.
Jaxon Bailey
And even if capitalism could be made to function as libertarians prescribe and not as it actually does, who the fuck cares? I don't see why it's anything desirable to us or a debunking of socialism.
David Foster
To some degree, profits will be concentrated and unequally distributed in markets, that's not capitalism's fault. It's a natural thing that happens when scarce resources are being coveted by many and when productive capability makes a difference.
State interference only makes it worse, by picking winners, or destroys production and makes the gap smaller at the same time it makes the bottom deeper.
You didn't really make that point in your leninist copypasta and you're not defending this current point very well right now.
I disagree with your whole post.
?
That's an opinion. So, are you saying that the state is a key ingredient in the formation of monopolies? Because that is kinda the point i'm trying to explore here.
I don't agree that private property depends on a coercive institution, in small scales it's proved not necessary and with modern communication tools it's more and more becoming unnecessary for any scale. That's why governments want to censor and control the internet.
What's the point of that graph?
How are you defining capitalism? The nation states you talk about have corporativist, interventionist policies so big that calling them capitalist would be like calling venezuela communist.
The guarantee of private property is how material progress is achieved and the interference in it is what lets states control and destroy it too.
If private property was respect, big corporations wouldn't be able to abuse people. Here's a simple example, a dam burst in brasil and contaminated a river, the people who lived around can't sue the company because it's state owned, they don't have property over the river and the courts also belong to the state and are geared to not respect private property, but to use arbitrary law made by the state.
That's an interesting discussion, i don't know if i'm equipped to take it and get anywhere meaningful though.
I created the thread to see if people could show me examples of monopolies coming about without government helping them out and if this resulted in harm for the clients. I have never seen any concrete example and was focusing in this simple matter.
of course i lean in the direction of thinking that, yes, the libertarian way is desirable and that socialism is a harmful thing, but i'm not completely convinced either way and wasn't trying to start such a broad discussion here.
Justin Martin
Capitalism has literally never existed. The United States of America is a socialist state. Brazil is socialist. Russia is still socialist. The cold war was just infighting between different socialist states. Jeff Bezos is socialist. Amazon is socialist. The CIA is socialist. Rupert Murdoch is socialist.
There is literally no discussion to be had if the existence of a government means it's not capitalism according to you.
Jackson Gonzalez
based
Charles Morales
Come on now, i'm not pulling a no true scotsman fallacy here.
I'm saying more freedom, more property rights and more capitalism is better. I'm saying a system with central banking, heavily regulated communications, health, fuels, energy, law, borders, deserves a name other than simply capitalism.
I woudn't call sovier russia communist, it was state socialism, it pretended to be even that because it was, actually, just a giant prison in the hands of a caste of lunatics that used socialist flavors in their brutality system.
I would argue that a brutal system of opression is the natural consequence of collectivism imposed through coercion and centralization of power, but that's another conversation.
Carter Murphy
Let me put it this way: you took the kool-aid. You took the bait hook, line and sinker. Capitalist states and individual capitalists fund schools, think tanks, media etc. to sell ideology. In state-funded economics classes you learn about the free market, competition, the laffer curve, dead weight loss, supply and demand etc. and capitalist-funded think tanks and media teach the same. This is not how a capitalist economy operates. This is not what the government preaches. This is not how the capitalist gets rich.
Instead of seeing this propaganda for what it is you conclude that the preaching and not the practice is what capitalism actually is.
Nolan Baker
It's still capitalism. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not capitalism.
Jason Campbell
monopolies are a consecuence of the division of labour in capital, a more divided labour makes a process more efficient, but to divide the labour more, you need more capital for machines, development of said machines, more labourers, ect. This makes it so that bigger producers are more efficient at producing stuff, which gives them more capital to further divide labour, which turns into to them bankrupting other firms, and the total number of firms decreasing, this is a process that is inherent in capital, it doesn't have anything to do with regulations increasing the cost of entry into different industries, as even without said costs added by regulations, and states, the fact that companies with bigger capital are more efficient is still true
Chase Rogers
Property rights are need to be enforced by an entity with monopoly on violence, aka a state. Without a state then your live by the law of might makes right and property belongs to he who can seize and defend it.
Logan Allen
First, how would we concretely get to this right-libertarian utopia - this Communism without Communism? Cryptocurrencies? Agitation? Capitalism is where the production of commodities - often through the commodification of existing things - is dominant and generalised. How could that occur without the coordination that only a state can wield and bring together? What happens to dissenters? Second, private property doesn't just allow one a space in which they can continue to do any stupid shit that they want regardless of whether it can allow them to do more things or not. As an institution, it represents a mystification of one's relation to the ruling order; though one who has private property believes that they are maintaining and developing it for their own private reasons, those reasons are always in the context of the ruling order of private property and commodity production itself - that order is simply taken as a given. 'I am maintaining my business for the sake of giving me a livelihood and allowing me to do X, Y and Z' leaves out the fact that they must qualify this livelihood and their success in relation to how well it serves to reproduce and how well it is sustained by the current system. If I said that I own private property because it would eventually give me a sense of fulfilment, that fulfilment would be itself something that I would have to fight for under the terms of capitalist competition, and it would also be seen as useful solely as something which I would be willing to defend above everything else to a measured extent in capitalist competition (which corresponds to value) - otherwise, I could just sell it!
Angel Reyes
Just shut up and read a book, you are wasting your time and everyone's time here.
Jonathan Hughes
This tbh. Socialism is perfect and if it's not perfect, it's not socialism. Same with capitalism (or should I say corporatism). We should take great care to distinguish the real world from our hypthetical but perfect make-believe systems by inventing new terms for all the imperfect renditions of our favourite ideologies instead of engaging with the flawed nature of reality. That is how we progress towards new understanding.
Leo Kelly
come on now, he isn't shitposting or spamming
Josiah Smith
You've done it now
Nolan Bailey
Continuing on, the reason why this mystification is toxic is because it breeds identity politics in the most general sense. I have already detailed this here:
Sebastian Jones
You're not forced to be here, suck my dick and lick my balls, or leave. Or complain, i don't care.
By that logic the soviet state was socialism and i would rather live in capitalism than in gulag land.
I was gonna take your post and substitute capitalism for socialism and insert frankfurt school or some other meme to show you how pointless and argument-less your post is. But i'm not trying to pick fights. Engaging you doesn't seem to bring any learning at all.
Well, i started the thread asking a somewhat specific question, but if you want to discuss capitalism and socialism i don't think we'll go very far before shitslinging begins. I still think individualism, capitalism (as close to no state intervention, as close to private propery as possible) is the better direction to point towards in this world of impure ideals. The more capitalism develops the less poverty and disease in the world, even if you include all those african countries that fucked themselves up for decades with (impure) socialist aims and military dictatorships.
Anthony Young
The USSR was real socialism. I would rather live there than in any capitalist state. The gulags were progressive and humane for their time.
Also why do you think monopolies exist? Do you have any evidence that are are monopolistic firms right now?
Robert James
Nicem i'll save this one. I can't decide if it's worse than when i saw a guy say that "the gulags have nothing in common with the nazi murder camps because the gulags had an educational purpose to them".
Either by superiority in providing the product or through corruption of government.
The rockefeller oil company in the 1800s had 90% of the market at some point, people created competitor factories just because they knew he would buy them out. During the whole time prices only fell and products kept being invented.
When disgruntled competitors used the government to kill rockefellers business he was already down to 60%.
Here in Brasil there is only one oil drilling company, state owned. One mining company has 90% of mining operations, privatized but the staten own 51% and appoints the directors. Telecommunications, 3 or 4 companies, heavily regulated through lobbying, people go to jail for providing internet.
Dylan Murphy
Yes, the USSR was socialist. Unlike you we don't pull the "not real [ideology I follow]".
Lucas Sullivan
None of those sound like monopolies. Just because competitors say so does not make standard oil a monopoly. As far as I'm concerned monopolies are theoretical constructs and don't exist. There can always be competitors entering from other sectors if the profit rate is high enough. Legal barriers are temporary as well. Just like one expects barbed wire to stop a determined attacker, laws are just there to slow down enemies. So in summary, I think you're tilting at windmills. There no reason consider the monopoly question since they are not something that is a problem in actually existing capitalism.
I'm sorry, have you considered emigrating?
Bentley Moore
answer me you coward
Henry Foster
Unfortunately, Vale was privatized in 1997. Where did you find that people can't sue them? As far as I'm aware, people in Brumadinho could choose between being directly indemnized R$ 100.000 or sue Vale and wait ages for some compensation.
Fun fact: the dam in Barão de Cocais is about to fall and may cause greater damage than Brumadinho, where it killed 237 people.
The government can not appoint Vale directors. I don't know where you found that figure, but a quick google search shows me you are incorrect.
exame.abril.com.br
Samuel Lee
The USSR and the USA has about the same incarceration rate and most gulag inmates weren't political prisoners. Also watch this youtube.com
Brayden Evans
false, the USSR only had a similar rate during WWII. otherwise it was much lower.
espressostalinist.com
Carson Anderson
Christopher Hill
(me)
Oh, I guess you are talking about Mariana. Still, it says a lot that a former state company turned private caused two disasters (and a soon to be third) in a span of 4 years. Those things didn't happen when it was a public company and IDK why market worshippers try to juggle things around and mumble "see? this is still the state's fault!". I've seen lots of snek faggots complain that the state was at fault for not inspecting that shit and trusting Vale's reports (but I thought you despised intervention!)
Thomas Morris
ok,then socialism is, proven by history, shitier than capitalism.
They can sue, but the results won't be good.
100k for the lost lives and the damages is a joke. The government is not soviet level so they can't get away with just telling people to fuck off.
Yes, another damn will burst.
Maybe i was wrong about vale and thinking about some other company, my bad.
My point still stands.
Oh, that's nice. I think the movie papillon is about those french murder camps.
What are the numbers for the purges and the famines?
I disagree, not completely though, my opinion is being formed, that's why i created a thread looking for examples of monopolies happening and being negative without government interference.
US loves to incarcerate people over drug offenses.
Those examples are not monopoly enough for you? We used to have 100% pure monopoly, state owned telecom company in the 80s to 90s, a phone line sold for 3 thousand dollars in the black market and you waited in line for years to buy it.
That's as pure a monopoly as i can give you, state made, harmful for consumers who want a damn phone line.
And from the non government side the best example i know of (that why i wanted other from this thread) is the rockefeller one, and you dismiss it as not even a monopoly.
Yes, but i would miss my fellow monkeys, also, nobody wants a monkey into their country.
Ayden Clark
When it was a public company it didn't produce ore enough to make a dam and cause an easy to see disaster.
And it takes no juggling to see that this is the states's fault. Australia has a mining market much freer than Brasil and about the same size, production wise. They have, i'm not sure, a hundred companies, brasil has 2 or 3 big companies. This is because of government. And being this huge they influence the government heavily.
Caleb Price
it works both ways though they don't contradict
Ethan Murphy
Well, this was my first thread on lefylpol.
It was much more pleasant than talking with Zig Forums but almost as useless.
Logan Diaz
I hope you found what you were looking for. Zig Forums really doesn't focus on AnCapism, as we have the more pressing task of criticizing regular Capitalism and our opposition on Zig Forums. AnCaps are just lolcows or rage fuel mostly.
Isaac Hernandez
Read a book.
Easton Brooks
I expected nothing and was, surprisingly, not disappointed . Chans will be chans.
I want answers from people, interactions, different analyses, even from a useless piece of shit like you.
If it's hard to get i here on autism central imagine looking for it in the real world.
Brandon Parker
only if you are a bourg lmao
the USSR secured all the necissities of life for its citizens. It eradicated hunger by the end of the 40's, homelessness by the 50's, granted women more freedom than they have in most Western countries today because they had financial independence from men, they created public transport so robust that cars were optional, they eliminated unemployment, ect. There is a laundry list of accomplishments of the USSR and the broader Warsaw Pact that stand uncontested to this day.
Anthony Brown
Russia in 1917 was barely industrialized, it was at a level of development comparable to Brazil and was first into space 4 decades later. India and China had near parity in 1950 and after that China developed much faster. Similarly you can compare Cuba with the Dominican Republic or Haiti.
Socialism has only come into being in underdeveloped and/or war-torn countries outside the developed imperialist capitalist core and with few exceptions has caused more rapid development than capitalist countries that used to be at the same level.
Nolan Collins
Oh, another interesting tidbit about this graph is the small drop and stagnation in Europe around 1990. Capitalist restoration has wrecked Eastern Europe and in many aspects has not recovered. Quality of life is marginally higher now than around the collapse but was decidedly lower just a decade ago.
Daniel Torres
Aham, it was wonderful in soviet russia, no numbers were ever cooked and the gulag was and education center for comrades who didn't know how to be true socialists.
Fuck off. I'm tired, show me monopolies or go to the gulag.
Luke Edwards
So what you're saying is that you'll hand wave any and all empirical evidence presented here that even slightly contradicts what you believe (which you automatically take as given without empirical support). You've already made up your mind on shit, why are you here? You're a liberal. If you want to be an ancap, go argue against age of consent laws on another board.
Dylan Adams
Jonathan Murphy
really n1gg4?
Bentley Gonzalez
Sounds like your feelings are getting in the way of facts and logic. Maybe grow up a bit and come back?
Charles Perez
Thread should have ended with this post. The division state/market is completely ideological and has no base in history.
Carter Jones
I dont like telling people to read a book but read a fucking book european. I actually lost brain cells reading this garbage.
Camden King
Even if it were true that monopolies could only be formed with government intervention, the belief that there could ever be a world where porkies and the state don’t collaborate is pure fantasy. You’re literally taking the two most wealthy and powerful groups in society (porkies and state officials) and expecting that they will just refrain from collaborating to maintain that wealth and power. The state will always be in the pocket of powerful corporations, the idealized free market described by lolberts is literally impossible.
Bentley Kelly
totally not booty blasted libcucktarian
Jonathan James
OP is a faggot.